Teaching learning strategies: The role of instructional context and teacher beliefs

Teaching learning strategies is one important aspect of the consistently claimed promotion of self-regulated learning in classrooms. This study investigated the role of instructional context and teacher beliefs for teachers' promotion of learning strategies. Twenty mathematics teachers were videotaped for five lessons in the ninth grade. Three lessons on the Pythagorean Theorem (introductory unit) and two lessons on word problems (practice unit) represented the two different instructional contexts. An observation instrument was used to code the teachers' promotion of cognitive strategies (organization, elaboration) and metacognitive strategies (planning, monitoring and evaluation). Teacher beliefs were captured by questionnaire. Results show a tendency to teach cognitive strategies more in introductory lessons compared to practice lessons, while planning strategies are more often taught in practice lessons. Regarding teacher beliefs, traditional beliefs (e.g., a formalist view of mathematics) were negatively related to the promotion of some types of strategies (e.g., elaboration), while progressive beliefs (e.g., emphasis on an individual reference norm) were positively associated with teaching several strategy types (e.g., monitoring and evaluation). Thus, teacher beliefs seem to play a role for strategy teaching, which makes them a possible starting point for enhancing the promotion of self-regulated learning and a potential key factor in teacher training.